Dying Embers
by ZekksGoddess
Summary: Dreams, memories, life, love. For some, these are akin to torture. [Angst, Drama, Romance]
1. Chapter 1

**_Dying Embers  
_By: ZekksGoddess  
**

**Disclaimer: **The characters and places aren't mine, they belong to George Lucas. The lyrics aren't mine either, and I'll credit them as due. I'm not getting any profit from this, so don't sue…please? The only things that are mine are the plot, and maybe a few characters.**  
**

**Timeframe:** Around the time Dark Nest would have taken place, if it existed in this AU.

**Rating:** PG

**Summary: **Life is full of choices- but what can a single choice cost you? What if that choice was a mistake?**  
**

**Characters:** Jagged Fel, Jaina Solo, Zekk

**Keywords: **love, denial, regret**  
**

**Genre: **angst, romance, slightly mystery**  
**

**Pairings:** J/J/Z

* * *

"_Afraid of feeling nothing.  
No bees or butterflies.  
My head is full of voices,  
And my house is full of lies." __-"Home" Sheryl Crow_

* * *

**Chapter One**

Shivers mounted rapidly along Jaina's spine as she surrendered her warm spot in the ragged armchair to retrieve a blanket. Wrapping it tightly around herself, she huddled immediately back into the armchair.

Despite the many heaters and corner-warmers the small apartment possessed, the cold always seemed to find a way inside to seize the young woman within its icy grasp. She could never seem to escape its chill.

The chair she sat in, curled up tightly beneath the thick blanket, was arranged carefully aside the apartment's largest window. The window's view was spectacular and Jaina often found herself staring out at it. But today, as it was many days, the window had been coated with a thick layer of frost, preventing the young woman from seeing much of anything.

With an agitated sigh and furrowed eyebrows, Jaina turned her head sharply away from the window. Releasing a long breath, she could have sworn she saw the warm air crystallize into a misty cloud and disappear. It had been four years since she had first moved to Csilla, and despite Jag's constant assurances, she didn't believe she'd ever get used to the cold.

In the beginning of her time there on Csilla, Jaina would have chided herself on her weak reaction to the cold, but not now. Her opinions on things had changed over time; become slacker…then again, she didn't have much incentive to care about them anymore.

"Not getting any warmer here." She murmured to herself, clutching the heavy blanket to her as she rose slowly and shuffled down the white-carpeted hallway, towards the back of the apartment, heading for the small bedroom that she and Jag shared.

As she eased herself into the bed and pulled the covers around her, she tried using the Force to focus on thoughts of heat and warmth. Slowly, drowsiness cut into her concentration and weighed against her eyelids. Gradually, she began to feel vague touches of warmth…

* * *

_Heat. Scorching heat. It was too much, a great deal too much._

_It took a moment, but as Jaina's dark eyes flashed about, she recognized the place. Ryloth. The Bright Lands of Ryloth, to be more specific. Surprised, she opened her mouth to call for…someone, she knew someone was with her, but the motion made her chapped lips ache and a strange croaking sound was all she could manage._

_"Shh." Another voice answered. She turned, and her brandy eyes blinked upon Raynar Thul. _

_But…but, he's gone. Those two dark Jedi from Myrkyr…Raynar is supposed to be gone!_

_Confusion held her still for a moment as she tried to figure out what was happening. She felt for a moment as though she had been thrust into some alternate universe, but then realization dawned on her. _

_She was on Ryloth with Raynar, exposed to the searing heat of the Bright Lands once more. That had actually happened once, it had been real. She must have been fifteen and she and her friends had set out to rescue Lowie from the vile clutches of Nolaa Tarkona's Diversity Alliance. She was inside a memory…her memory._

_"Help…help is here." Raynar's roughened voice broke into her thoughts, his arm raising with an incredible lack of speed to point at a dark, advancing shape on the horizon. It was a matter of seconds before the craft had come into close enough range for Jaina to identify it as the _Lightning Rod

_Suddenly, her surroundings morphed. The sky, hot and fiery, receded in her vision until it was safely locked behind a transparisteel viewport. The uneven, scalding sand and glassy rock melted away and smooth, shining durasteel took its place. Jaina blinked once, and the change was completed. She was inside the ship now, reclining in one of the comfortably padded seats that filled the main hold._

_"I must say I think you've had better days." A voice said, and Jaina drank gratefully as Zekk - where did he come from? - held a large canteen of water to her chapped, burnt lips. "Red isn't the greatest color for you."_

_Ignoring the pain that accompanied the motion, Jaina twisted her mouth into a wry smile. "Maybe we should've switched places. You could use a tan a lot more than I could."_

_"Hey, this is supposed to be my chance to pick on you, not the other way around! Ah, but maybe I _should_ give the injured and weak a chance."_

_"Oh, you're low." Jaina responded after another long gulp of the cool water. "But then again, if you think the only time you're successful at picking on me is when I have the disadvantage….well, it shows just how good you are at it."_

_"I take it back. You're not injured and weak, you're just mean." Zekk said in mock hurt. "Can't a guy have one little second of glory?"_

_"Nope. You're just not allowed, plain and simple."_

_"Oh, that's harsh. If you weren't recovering, I'd…I'd…"_

_Jaina giggled at his pause, ignoring the spark of pain it brought to her throat. "You'd_ what_, tickle me to death, maybe?"_

_Zekk nodded, his expression grave. "Good possibility."_

_"Jaina?" Someone called suddenly, and it seemed to Jaina that the voice was strangely out of place. As a matter of fact, she didn't remember it at all…it wasn't a part of her memory…who _was_ that?_

_Zekk's head turned toward the voice and then back to Jaina, his emerald eyes downcast._

_"Jaina?" The calls continued…_

* * *

"Jaina…Jaina?"

The cold rushed back into her body, stealing away the last vestiges of warmth as her brandy eyes blinked open.

"Jag?" she asked, rubbing the bleariness from her eyes. "What…what are you doing home? I thought you weren't supposed to be back for a few more hours…"

"I tried reaching you on the comm. but there was no response so I decided to come home and inform you myself."

"Oh." She muttered, her brandy eyes flicking to the small chrono that sat atop Jag's nightstand. She'd been asleep for a few hours, apparently. "Well…inform me of what?"

"I'm taking another shift. Don't expect me back until late." He responded, his eyebrows raised at her.

"Oh…ok." Jaina had to wonder why he hadn't just left her a message.

"Were you, uh…having a bad dream…or something?" He asked, his green eyes surveying her face carefully.

Jaina paused for a few seconds, considering his question. "No. Not bad at all."

Jag nodded and moved into the hallway, calling a quick farewell over his shoulder. After pulling on his thermal jacket, he paused in the doorway, his forest green eyes turning back to rest on the hallway that led to he and Jaina's bedroom for a brief moment before stepping out into the frigid air.

Back in the bedroom, still huddled in blankets, Jaina had rolled from the bed and moved to a small stand of drawers that had been tucked neatly into a corner of the room. Sliding the bottom-most drawer open, she reached in a hand, pushing aside a disarrayed pile of holos and pulled out a tiny, purple-coated box. Within the box, after she had snapped it open, lay a sparkling gem encrusted to a shining golden band. She ran a finger along the smooth metal, her brandy eyes transfixed as the lights hit the gem, making it seem as though there were a fire lit within it, fighting to be set free. It was the ring Jag had proposed to her with so many years ago- no, no only four years ago, she reminded herself.

Looking at the ring, her dream sprang to mind again, leaving her to wonder why that particular memory had re-visited her in her sleep.

She shook her head with a sigh and dropped the ring back into its box, replacing it in the proper drawer. The image of the fiery light dancing within the gem, struggling to break free of its diamond-hard confines stayed with her as she slid the drawer firmly shut.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Apologies if this story seems really slow-paced right now. It's kind of necessary at the moment, but don't worry, it will pick up soon enough.

* * *

_"Too far apart to  
Bridge the distance  
But something keeps us  
Hanging on and on..."  
_-Mariah Carey "I Don't Wanna Cry"_

* * *

_

**Chapter Two**

The children had been around today. Jaina's brandy eyes swept over the apartment, amazed, as always, at how clean they left it, and turned back to the window.

It wasn't as thickly frosted as most days. The icy frost had thinned out over the transparisteel, allowing Jaina a blurry view. But it was a change all the same, and it relieved Jaina to know the world was still out there.

A strange thought, she knew. But after spending all her time in the small apartment, cowering from the intense cold beneath a blanket, sometimes she felt as though the galaxy had come to a stop.

In a way, it had, though. At least_ her_ galaxy had. It had ended the moment she had first stepped through the door to the apartment, unaware that it would become like a prison.

Prison. Jaina's brandy eyes widened at the word. How could she think of this place- her home- as a prison? A small, surprised sound escaped from her parted lips as she realized that the apartment had become a prison for her, in a way. She resented it, hated every inch of durasteel wall the held her inside.

She turned sharply away from the window. How could she be thinking this? What kind of a person was she? Surely a wife wasn't supposed to consider the home that she and her husband shared a prison…  
Her slender fingers held the blanket close as she shifted in the chair. Her brandy eyes scanned the room once more, marveling at its cleanliness.

Having the children come seemed to be good for at least one thing. The apartment was always much cleaner afterwards. But they only came about once every four or five months, when there was nowhere else for them to go. Jaina got the feeling not many Chiss trusted Jaina with their children for an entire day- they'd probably heard the tales of her domestic abilities from Syal and Baron Fel…or even more likely, Wyn.

A humorless smirk curved onto Jaina's lips as she thought of Jag's family. His mother, Syal was the only reason the children ever came, after all. Jaina supposed it was her rather clever, yet not-so-subtle way of hinting for Jaina to learn a thing or two about childcare.

Once, Jaina would have snorted at this, would have had a thing or two to say to the woman. But now was different. She hadn't even mustered up enough of her old fire to object to the children coming, although she loathed the idea of being a baby-sitter.

Luckily, she and the children had been able to come to a deal. It was an unspoken agreement that as long as they let her alone and didn't get into trouble, she'd do the same and let them alone.

The Chiss children were odd, anyway. Strangely enough, they intimidated her. A wry smile formed on her lips as she thought. She'd never been one to let someone intimidate her, never in her life had she stood for anything like that, and now, here she was, intimidated by mere children. It repulsed her, sometimes, what she had become.

With a joyless smile, Jaina thought of the irony that had become her life. Most young girls dreamed of their wedding night with fervor and stars in their wide, innocent eyes. Jaina could truthfully say she had never been one of them; she'd wanted to live her life, to be out there, doing something in the galaxy before she even thought of marriage as a possibility. And yet here she was, that chapter of her life closed already.

She jumped suddenly, surprised as the front door slid open. Jag was home.

Once, she might have sensed his arrival through the Force. But now, she normally avoided opening up to it. Sensing everyone, friends and family, regardless of the distances between them, only made her days a bit bleaker.

"Hello." Jag said as he stepped inside, the door sliding to a shut behind him.

"Hi."

"How were they today?" He asked as he removed his thermal jacket. She didn't need an explanation to know who he meant.

"Alright." As far as she was concerned, no one, not even Jag, needed to know that the kids really took care of themselves when they were around. It was how their arrangement worked…leaving each other alone.

"You're really good with them you know." He commented, grinning as he placed his flight helmet on a shelf and moved to take a seat in a high-backed chair next to hers.

Jaina didn't respond. Again, Jag didn't need to know what really happened when the children were around. It wasn't of any real importance.

"I ah, actually wanted to talk to you about that." He murmured, eyeing her as he wrung his hands together.

"Wait…talk to me about what?" Jaina asked, her brow furrowing above puzzled brandy eyes. She had no idea where this conversation was going, but she got the distinct feeling that she didn't want to be in it.

"Well, I was thinking. We have been married for a few years now- a little over four- and it's about time we think about starting a family." He was eyeing her carefully, obviously expecting her to erupt at him at any given moment. Once, she might have. But he was lucky; she hadn't been that volatile in ages.

Instead, she just stared at him.

"Jaina?" He asked tentatively. "What do you think?"

She still didn't respond. Instead, she rose to her feet, clutching her blanket tightly around her. Without a single word, she retreated to their small bedroom.

Thoughts whirled within her mind, but all they did for her was make her more confused._ Some Sword of the Jedi,_ she thought bitterly.


End file.
